Cal/liope in love: the 'prescientific desires' of an apolitical 'hermaphrodite'

This article provides a critical reading of heterosexist determinism and the erasure of lesbian desire, activity and subjectivity in Jeffrey Eugenides' novel, "Middlesex".     

Cheaper by the dozen? The marginal time costs of children in the Philippines

The important relationship between fertility rates and economic development has prompted many researchers to try and better understand the determinants of family size. It has repeatedly been shown that the costs of children, both direct and indirect, are one of the most important determinants of fertility, exerting a significantly negative effect on birth rates in both developed and developing countries. Many studies which investigate the relationship between the costs of children and family size have assumed that these costs do not vary with parity. However, there is substantial evidence that the marginal costs of children are not constant but decrease with birth order in developed countries. In this paper, the hypothesis that there are diminishing marginal time costs of children is tested using household data from the developing country setting of the Philippines. By examining the determinants of additional time spent in childcare before and after the birth of a child, it is found that the marginal time costs are not the same across households of various sizes. Firstborn children cost significantly more in terms of additional mother's time than children of higher birth orders. In addition, the time costs of the second child are found to be significantly greater than those of the third child. However, these economies of scale in childcare are limited and do not extend beyond three children. The effect of birth spacing on the marginal time costs of children is also found to be significant.     

Bayesian regression with multivariate linear splines

We present a Bayesian analysis of a piecewise linear model constructed by using basis functions which generalizes the univariate linear spline to higher dimensions. Prior distributions are adopted on both the number and the locations of the splines, which leads to a model averaging approach to prediction with predictive distributions that take into account model uncertainty. Conditioning on the data produces a Bayes local linear model with distributions on both predictions and local linear parameters. The method is spatially adaptive and covariate selection is achieved by using splines of lower dimension than the data.     

Normalizing post adoption support for all

Within a context of substantial adoption policy reform in England, this paper explores post adoption support. Findings from a small‐scale survey of 22 local authorities in England and interviews with 11 adoption practitioners (from 11 of the authorities that completed the survey) are presented and related national policy discussed. The paper argues that support should continue postmatching a child with their adoptive parent(s) and that this should be the norm rather than the exception. It also emphasizes the need to improve the availability of and access to post adoption support in a timely manner.